Joseph Stalin's Relevance to Modern Selective Moral Outrage

"One single death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic."

~ Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR and responsible for 50-100 million deaths as a result of his tyrannical political regime.

This very line was actually quoted in an article I read in 2009 on the humor site Cracked.com entitled "What is the Monkeysphere?" The presentation makes reference to evolutionary assumptions, but there is a psychological truth underpinning the practical conclusions. That is known as Dunbar's Number, which is variously hypothesized to be between 50 and 300, and it represents the total number of people that any individual can maintain thriving relationships with at any one time. Thriving, so that any impact on one of those people will be emotionally significant to the person who is friends with them. It is only within this theoretical limit that a person has the mental capacity to feel a connection to others, so that they are vicariously affected by positive as well as negative impacts on that second person. Such as promotion, award recognition, the birth of a child....or losing one's job, illness, or death.

Cracked's "Monkeysphere" thesis is that outside of the people we know personally (or know enough about to feel a connection with, as in celebrities or famous people), if something good or bad happens to another person, we simply aren't affected. We don't care, because we don't know. They are too distant for it to matter to us on an intimate level. We can think about it, but we are severely limited in our ability to feel about it.

People do have the capacity to train themselves to be concerned for others that they do not know. We have a great capacity for developing selfless compassion and to practice treating distantly related people with an equity approaching that we give to more intimate friends and family, through the exercise of empathy. We act toward strangers as if it were deeply affecting us or someone close to us, knowing that for that person in question, the pain or joy really is close to home.

But it is not the natural thing for people to do. And even when they do, they often compartmentalize it. The irony is that it's sometimes easier to help strangers than to help people you dislike, simply because you don't know them enough to find something about them disagreeable.

See, it's because the 'Monkeysphere'  finds application both in harmonious relationships, and in acrimonious relationships. Just how you would be more devastated if your spouse, parent or sibling were knifed to death in front of you, but feel a hollow sorrow, or simply hollowness, when you hear of knife attacks on the other side of the globe, you also find it much easier to hate the influential national pundit who is promoting things you think are terrible, than to hate the nameless, faceless foreign terrorist who may or may not be responsible for anything in particular. We find it hard to get worked up about generalities, but when we connect it to something specific, then we become emotionally invested.

Lately, we are being exposed to numerous examples of the tragedy/statistic dichotomy that Joseph Stalin opined about.

Many lions die every year, from natural causes, from hunting, or from poaching, but when a lion with a name, who is described as a "national treasure," dies, the social media sphere whips up outrage.

Upwards of 30 million people are currently using the website Ashley Madison to hook up with other people hoping to cheat on their spouses without being caught, and there is no outrage at all. In fact, the company was planning to go public, meaning that people would buy and sell stocks, betting on the success of a company designed for the explicit purpose of facilitating and encouraging the destruction of marriages. And not only that, but when news broke recently that credit card information from users on this site had  been compromised, there was outrage. Not at the adultery, which is legal, but at the hacking, which is illegal. We now live in a country where violating the trust of your closest confidant is so passe' it's expected, but if someone dares to expose the adulterer, how dare they violate such a sacred thing as another person's privacy?

This is an abomination. Not the adultery itself. The fact that the whole country doesn't bat an eye. The fact that the country not only sees it, not only tolerates it, but defends it and gets offended by those who attack the assumption that your adultery should be kept secret out of respect for you, as if the adulterer's feelings need to be protected! As if THEY are a victim, and not the one they cheated on!

Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. ~ Romans 1:32

30 million adulteries is a statistic.

But one single adultery is a media frenzy.

It turns out that Josh Duggar (and side note: 15,000 US government officials, at last report earlier this morning) was one of those 30 million.

The unknown millions don't cause much offense because of Dunbar's Number -- people watching simply don't know that many people, so it's too overwhelming to make sense to care about. But if someone they know of is involved, then they become more invested.

It's weird.

If what Josh did was considered wrong by the culture, there would be numerous headlines like the following:
"30 Million Shameless Adulterers in the USA."
"Expose of the Shocking Infidelity of 15,000 US Government Officials."
"Hooray! Ashley Madison Hackers Give Cheaters What They Deserve!"

but I have seen none. Have you? What I have seen are headlines indicating shock over the hack, not shock over the adultery. I've seen the morning news indicating that the Pentagon is afraid of employees being turned by blackmail -- but they apparently couldn't care enough to intervene to stop them from putting themselves in positions of indiscretion that could lead to blackmail in the first place. And I've seen the cliche'd criticism of Josh Duggar -- but not for his adultery.

Josh isn't being attacked because he's an adulterer. There's nothing wrong with adultery in the eyes of the nation. So it's not moral outrage. Josh is being attacked because he's promoted, and lobbied for, the advancement of morality that considers adultery to be wrong. He's being attacked because of inconsistency, of living a double life, being two-faced, being a hypocrite. And for once, the social-media complex is right on that fact.

But this begs a very poignant question.

Is this how we treat people who act inconsistently with their stated beliefs?

What a merciless society.

No, the truth is that there is a spiritual dimension to this. The enemies of God (meaning demons) are delighted with the opportunity to attempt to discourage others from considering Christianity, by finding themselves a Christian caught in public sin which they can slander and shame and smear to stain the conscience of every unbeliever who hears the news. Christianity must be worthless, after all, if it doesn't even restrain people from being child molesters, porn addicts and adulterers. So goes the attack.

And also in the spiritual dimension, people KNOW that adultery is wrong. You can't find anybody who would heap so much vitriol (here I'm making reference to social media postings by private individuals, which anyone can find to read with little difficulty) on somebody who is caught breaking their own rules. This sort of hatred is not inspired by conniving contestants on "Bachelor in Paradise," or of partisan politicians who promise to fight corruption, and take massive campaign donations from special interests, or even high profile celebrities who are caught in affairs or divorce.

The animosity derives from a crooked conscience that knows no mercy, which nevertheless has the imprint of the Law of God which inspires revulsion at sin. They hate Josh's infidelity because infidelity is wrong, even if they don't consciously admit it or even know it. They "show that the work of the Law is written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their conflicting thoughts accusing or even excusing them." (Romans 2:15)

The outrage against Josh Duggar is not just a sad commentary on our own nation's hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to morality. It is PROOF that even despite our "liberated" consciousnesses, everyone is equipped with a God-given sense of right and wrong, so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20) when denying the Bible's prescriptions for ethical conduct. There is no foundation for morality outside of the Biblical Worldview, so conversely, when someone senses outrage in their heart over the actions of Josh Duggar, their "conscience is bearing witness" to God's existence and the universality and absoluteness of His law. Which means that they are accountable to Him for what they do, and will be judged by His standard.

We are no better off than Josh, then, by the time we come face to face with this fact:



And the challenge I leave to the Duggar Family critics, who don't have the same outrage for the 30 million other Ashley Madison users,

Joseph Stalin mocks you from the grave.

~ Rak Chazak

The Boy Scout Shift Was Inevitable, in Hindsight

I realize that the title makes it sound like I was surprised at the change in policy. Not so. I simply want to draw attention to the fact that one can predict things over longer periods of time if an effort is made to keep track of unfolding events and properly extrapolate.

For instance, consider the placement of the BSA change of policy with respect to gay youth, gay leaders, and the disregard and repeal of DOMA.

February 2011 -- Obama orders the DOJ to stop defending DOMA in court.
January 2013 -- ban on women in combat roles lifted by military leaders
May 2013 -- BSA removes ban on gay youth  (scouts)
June 2013 -- SCOTUS rules DOMA unconstitutional
July 2015 -- BSA removes ban on gay adult leaders (scouters)

What's the significance? Only that the purpose of Scouting, from its inception in the UK as well as the BSA's founding ~10 years later, was to prepare youth with outdoor survival skills so that they would transition better into military service. Scouting has always been a recruitment center, of sorts, for all branches of the US military.

So when the military now recruits homosexuals, what logic is there for the military's primary enlistment-driving organization to have restrictions on who may serve, which the military itself does not have?

It was obvious, that when the Military began to permit openly homosexual soldiers, that the BSA would follow suit. After all, because of the close relationship, many campouts and jamborees are held on or near military bases or on public land, and it's to be expected that the US GOVT would rescind their favorable treatment/sponsorship of the BSA if the organization didn't submit to the new morality.

The BSA capitulated without a fight, though, indicating that the leadership is all too keen to please. In light of the rapidity with which they changed to match popular culture, I am truly curious as to whether or not the BSA will soon become 100% coeducational. Will there be a Title IX claim coming soon? What if the girls who want to join claim to be boys (i.e. transgender)?

Hindsight is always 20/20. I'm ready...surprise me.

~ Rak Chazak

A Day That Will Live in Blasphemy

On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan launched a covert bombing raid on the US Navy's base at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. Over 2400 Americans were killed. On the next day, FDR took to the podium and asserted that it would be remembered as "A date that will live in infamy." It was seen as such an atrocity that public opinion swayed away from isolationism enough that America entered WWII, just as the Japanese had hoped to prevent them from doing, with a preemptive strike. But part of the fleet was out at sea, and had evaded the attack.

That was a day that would live in infamy, and which is now almost forgotten. I heard that Japan recently granted, or was trying to grant, itself the right to have a standing military, whereas the occupying US forces had written into Japan's constitution decades ago that Japan would “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”

More memorable to Americans, June 23rd, 2015 will not be regarded by most as a cause for despair but a cause for celebration. However, the few Christians in this country regard it as something else entirely. It was on that day that 2 men and 3 women (Justices Breyer, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsberg) usurped the throne of God and professed to create law, let alone ethical truths, out of thin air as if empowered to decree what is good and evil without, and contrary to, the perfect will of God. The opinion, in full, with the dissents, is in a single file here: Obergefell v. Hodges (c. 500 KB)

It was on that day that the judgment America has been heading to was underwritten by its representatives in the abdicated cause of justice. A handful of people have consented to the doom of this country by setting themselves up as enemies of His, and daring Him to do something about it. This is the legacy of the Flower Children and their parents. What will ours be? Will there be anything left to leave?

Romans 1
²⁸ And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting...³²  knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

"Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
~ Rak Chazak

A Model Answer

I don't know details about Dr. Kent Brantly's faith, but per 1 Corinthians 13, "love believes all things," so I'm accepting it at face value as genuine, absent any knowledge of falsity. What I have seen has been encouraging, and I'm joyful over the public testimony he's given -- not of his medical expertise or experience surviving Ebola, but of how a professed Christian faith works in and through every aspect of life, providing the conviction to step out boldly in whatever happens to be one's earthly passion ("whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might." "whatever you do, work as for the Lord and not for men.")

This is the video of his interview on the PBS Newshour that aired yesterday:


Dr. Brantly was there on account of his recent book, Called for Life, and here is the part of the interview that stood out to me:

HARI SREENIVASAN: What role do you think your faith played in all this?
DR. KENT BRANTLY: That’s a hard question for me to answer, because I try not to compartmentalize my life into, this is my faith life, this is my work life, this is my family life.
My faith is an integral part of who I am. It’s part of the lens through which I view everything in life. So, I can’t separate this experience from my faith.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Some people are going to say, look, the difference might not be his faith. It’s that he’s an American and he got literally the best care on the planet for this, vs. all the people who don’t get that, not just in Liberia, but anywhere else.
DR. KENT BRANTLY: I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t disagree with that statement.
I don’t think there is anything special about my faith that saved my life. If anything, my faith is what put me in a position where I got Ebola. And I’m really thankful to the United States government, to the government of Liberia, to Emory University Hospital, to Phoenix Air, to the State Department, all of the people that played a role in providing me with the treatment I received.
I don’t say that, oh, it was my faith that saved me, not those people. I believe God used those people to save my life, not because of my great faith. It just is. And so I give God the credit for it. But I thank all of those people, and I — I love them.

In isolation, those two answers were excellent. It was encouraging to see that thinking faith get national attention.

~ Rak Chazak

Transcript copied from: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/missionary-recounts-ebola-fight-doctor-patient/ 

"We Can't Be Sure if He Was Tied to A Terrorist Group"

A young man recently killed 4 marines at a recruitment center.

The news media has been telling me, every time I've heard of this since that event took place, that they just can't figure out what his motivation was. Most explicitly, they've said that they can't be sure if he has "ties to a terrorist organization," or "ties to ISIS."

Excuse me, but isn't this missing the point? I doubt it matters whether a drive-by shooting has ties to the Crip gang, Hell's Angels or the Italian Mob for it to count as gang violence. It either is, or isn't. Likewise, it's either terrorism or not terrorism -- whether he has "ties to an existing terrorist organization," while useful for preventing future attacks, is a massive red herring. It's as if the talking heads think we can't call it terrorism unless the guy went to Syria to be trained by ISIS.

Well, what would help you to decide whether he engaged in terrorism?

A Tale of Two Pain-Killer Advertisements.

I've always found myself offended by commercials that don't actually explain why their product is better than another -- let alone prove it -- because I realize that they operate on the concept of impressions. That is, they hope that the commercial itself will be memorable, so that when you remember the commercial -- because it was amusing, exciting, original, etc -- your mind associates the memory with the product. For a simple example, someone trying to cheer up someone else by saying "put a smile on" could result in that person saying, "hmmm, you know I am actually in the mood for some McDonald's."

The business incentive is that what people remember better are images and feelings (what something on TV looked like, or how it made you feel) than they do specifics of nitty-gritty facts, like whether Flonase blocks neutrophils, leukotrienes, histamines, etc (these all show up on the screen for their commercial but the persuasion is far less heady than that. It's a simple "we have 6, the competition has 1. We're better, yay! Buy our product").

The idea that someone's trying to get around my conscious decision-making apparatus and try to get me to buy something not because it's a good choice, but because it's the only product in that category that I can remember by recalling commercials, is insulting to me, because I've always preferentially gravitated toward what I can determine to be true and right and good, rather than what merely makes me feel good or what seems popular.

Plot Twist

Similarly insulting is the "identity politics" of various political movements in vogue at the moment. This is not limited to liberal/leftist/democrat agendas, but they are by far more invested in splitting their constituent demographics into groups and targeting single-issue messages to each one of them. When a political figure says "I think you're too dumb to think about more than one issue at a time," it insults me. But it must work, because candidates for both parties generate massive applause by doing what's called "doling out red meat." The primary season for the Republican 2016 field is getting ramped up, and examples of this include people shouting "God bless America" at the end of the speech, as if that's supposed to make every Christian want to vote for them, regardless of what else they said. But democrats are even more insidious, because they don't just utilize identity politics, they are far more effective than republicans at capitalizing on resentment, envy, hatred of 'the other,' often playing their constituent groups against each other. 

One way they insult you is by pretending that seeing more people "like you" represented somewhere, be it among Olympic sports teams (how many Americans are Olympians?), on television (how many of us are TV stars?), on news broadcasts (how many of us are journalists?), etc, that this will somehow improve your life. This is the insulting lie they tell women, blacks, hispanics and homosexuals, among other groups: that without doing anything significant to improve real life for the vast majority of Americans belonging to those groups, they agitate for rich CEOs to increase the amount of women news anchors, or black film leads, or homosexual sitcom actors, and they do this by telling the constituency to be angry that there aren't "more of them" represented in those positions.

The rich people shuffle the deck, the democrats claim victory, and the constituency feels satisfied with the result of something that does diddly squat to improve their life or liberty. And one simply must ask, "do they really think people are that dumb?"

Apparently they do. Whether people are that dumb depends on how representative the many people who happily follow along with this identity politicking are of the sum of the constituent groups in question.

My Point
And that's why a marketing department can propose this advertisement for an over-the-counter painkiller.

A lot of the promotion of homosexuality in television has been seen as "brave" or "bold," ostensibly because so many people are against it that it must be difficult or risky to endeavor. I suppose that means that the makers of this advertisement likewise think that there must be wide swaths of America that are Adoption-Racists, who don't think people should adopt kids who aren't of the same "race," judging by the still shot alone. It's hard to figure out the reasoning of people who don't expect you to be intelligent. What are they really expecting the response to be?

Well, the clear intent of this Tylenol commercial is to say "gay men raising children are just as good of a family dynamic as a man and woman, therefore, buy our product."

What does a painkiller have to do with homosexual households? Shouldn't I get a painkiller based on whether it reduces my pain? But nope, not according to Tylenol. They're banking on the fact that you don't buy painkillers for any scientific reason, but because you want to support the message and corporate policy of the company that creates the painkiller. They are hoping that you will think, "this company advocates for a single issue that I happen to agree with, so I will buy their product to increase their quarterly profits, to send the message that the American people supports their political views."

In contrast, another common painkiller, Aleve, uses this argument:

Aleve works better than Tylenol or Advil. All day long, all day strong.

It might be true, it might not be, but at least they're making the case that you should buy their product because it works.

Perhaps Aleve's corporate bigwigs are just as pro-ssm as Tylenol's are. That's not the point I'm making here. The point I'm making is, the way in which large companies advertise their products is based on how they are rewarded.

If an ad spot generates more revenue by making a scientific argument: "our product works and is better than the competition's," then they will keep doing that.

If an ad spot generates more revenue by making a political statement: "gay marriage, yay!" then they will keep doing that.

Takeaway:
The increase in recent days of similar ads, which portray happy homosexual couples (together with blended families and "interracial" couples, as if those things were morally controversial) being 'just like everyone else,' bottle-feeding babies and living the American Dream, seem to demonstrate that when it comes to the Public's response to advertisements, the People are thoroughly committed to rewarding rich people who treat them according to "identity politics," rather than rewarding people who encourage them to think and make decisions based on what works.

The consequences are readily apparent to that proportion of us which prefers to think.

~ Rak Chazak

Gonzalez case ironically provides an example in favor of a strong central government

Quick recap of the history of "States' Rights"

In 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted, and ratified by 1781 by the original 13 States. Because of the revolutionaries' distrust of an autocratic dictator (seeing as they just fought a war to free themselves from King George's rule), they intentionally made the central government far weaker than the States.

This presented obvious problems to the cohesiveness of the union, as a collection of papers by James Madison outlines. (this was from another link off of the first).

For example, there was no Executive to enforce the acts passed by Congress. Each State began printing its own money, raising its own military, and engaging in international agreements independently of one another.

The States sent representatives to rectify this in the Constitutional Convention. Convening first in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1789. They gave the central government of the federal system more power. As a pushback to this, there was clamor for a Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution, to guarantee protections for the People against a now much stronger central government, and this occurred later.

The point of a federal system where the central government is stronger than the states in certain regards, is to prevent chaos from arising out of the states passing contradictory laws, attempting to control other states, seceding from the union or going to war with each other.

That last part is significant. The test of the federal system came with the Civil War, when pro-slavery states attempted to use "states' rights" to justify seceding from the union. Many legal pundits today still think that this is a constitutional right. However, whereas a state seceding from a state (West Virginia seceded from Virginia to join the Union during the Civil War) is not unconstitutional, a state seceding from the union is. And via might-makes-right, Abraham Lincoln cemented the role of the federal government through his executive actions leading up to and during the Civil War. Whereas the most obvious effect of the Civil War in our society was to end slavery, that was not the initial reason for it. Here is an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

The whole thing is worth reading. It's short but makes it clear that Abraham Lincoln did hope to end slavery, but that that was not his primary goal in his executive capacity, early on. The primary goal was to do what was his Constitutional obligation as the Executive -- to preserve the Union.

Why am I spending so much time talking about the Federal government? Well, it's because --

if the Central government is stronger than the states in matters of foreign policy and commerce and trade and international agreements and military etc etc etc,

then some states won't, for example, take it into their own hands to deport illegal immigrants (such as Arizona), while others take it into their own hands to refuse to cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement in turning over known criminals (such as the 'sanctuary cities' in California, one of which is San Francisco).

San Francisco has a law that requires officials to ignore Federal requests for cooperation on the subject of illegal immigrants. Rather than turning them over for processing and possible deportation, they are released into the general public.

That is how a man who has been deported 5 times has now ended up in a Sanctuary City, where officials arrested him, ignored a Federal ICE detainment request, and released him back onto the street, where he then murdered a young woman.

It's both the city's fault and the federal government's fault. For one, the city has an unconstitutional law on the books. For two, the Obama administration has had an inconsistent, at best, approach to immigration. They deport some immigrants, but release others from prison onto the streets. They refuse to send personnel to the Arizona-Mexico border, or to in any way secure it, and then sue Arizona for attempting to do what the Constitution requires Washington to do but which Washington won't do. They allow sanctuary cities to operate without any such lawsuits.

If laws regarding immigration were applied evenly across the board, and actually enforced evenly as well, then none of this would be an issue in the first place.

We have a dysfunctional system where the central government won't do its job, and the States are acting more and more like they did in the 1780s and 1850s-60s, as a confederacy where everyone gets to have their own opinion about what laws are important and which ones aren't.

And it gets the people that the government is sworn to protect, killed.

That is injustice. Deportation is not injustice, it is law. When someone who has been deported 5 times and shouldn't be in the country in the first place murders an innocent pedestrian, THAT is injustice.

I'm just glad I don't live near the border. All I can do is watch and opine. I abhor the feeling of helplessness. But feeling helpless when your family and friends are becoming victims of government corruption that encourages lawlessness in your city and state, that is a deplorable feeling.

~ Rak Chazak

People Who Accuse Others of Victim-Blaming Are Demeaning Women

Victim Blaming: Accusing someone on the receiving end of some calamity to be responsible for its occurrence. 

ex: "Telling women not to put themselves in situations where they might be sexually assaulted is blaming the victim. The only thing that causes rape is rapists."

Often heard from: feminists, "social justice warriors," change advocates of various kinds that are commenting on violence or gender related issues.

Please see my treatise on why this argument is only half true, and ultimately hurtful despite its being (maybe) well-intentioned: Treatise: Third-Wave Feminism's Irresponsibility Double-Standard

*  *        *  *        *  *

So how does accusing someone of "victim-blaming" demean women?, I'm sure you're dying to know.

I'll answer. But first let me clarify that it's certainly possible to be legitimately at fault for blaming victims, which is wrong.

Scenario A: "She should have known better. By getting wasted drunk around a bunch of frat guys, she brought this on herself."
Verdict: Victim Blaming. Disgusting assertion that she's responsible for someone else's sins against her.

Scenario B: "Rapists bear the full responsibility for their own actions. Even so, it's wise to be aware of risks and take action to mitigate your exposure to them. Please consider the way you dress, the people you socialize with, whether you walk alone, whether you carry mace/air horns/a gun, and whether you overtly sexually entice men around you, as ways to help protect yourself."
Verdict: Not Victim-Blaming. You can take action to protect yourself without implying that you're responsible for what others do to you otherwise.

And yet, this is often attacked as "blaming the victim" by feminists in online fora. I submit that this could be because the feminists a) really have no clue how to solve the problem and don't want to believe that they can fix it because that makes them feel uncomfortable and morally conflicted, and b) really resent men and want all the attention and responsibility to be theirs (men's).

1. Teaching someone how to drive is not blaming the victim if they are involved in a car crash.
2. Police officers wearing bulletproof vests are not blaming the victims of homicides for their gunshot wounds.
3. Teaching wilderness survival, gardening, hunting etc doesn't "blame the victims" of famine, starvation, or those who die of thirst or exposure to the elements.

Giving someone tips for how to protect themselves from getting hurt is not asserting that they are responsible for undesirable outcomes, when something happens that hurts them, which are out of their control.

Now that that has been emphasized, there are some direct consequences of this.

When someone discusses rape prevention in the vein of scenario B above, and someone responds to accuse them of "blaming the victim," then that person is actually demeaning women and promoting sexist attitudes that contribute to rape.

Say whaaat? Let me guide your thinking:

Paradigm shift 1
Taking away someone's responsibility takes away their ability. Taking away their ability takes away their power to effect change. Taking away their power takes away their freedom of choice, and makes them helpless victims of circumstance, at the mercy of their abusers.

This is what denying women their right to prevent rape (by denying that they have the ability or responsibility to protect themselves) accomplishes.

Paradigm shift 2
By asserting that rapists are the sole factor in rape**, advocates are denying the woman's responsibility over herself. By denying her responsibility, they assert that women are incapable of doing anything to protect themselves that might actually decrease the chances of getting raped. This makes women out to be defenseless. This view is sexist because it portrays women as weak and ineffective compared to men, who always get what they want because they alone have the power and are the sole determinant of what they will be able to do.

Paradigm shift synthesis
Taken together, the logical conclusions of accusing "scenario B men" of "blaming the victim" is the promotion of the belief that women are incapable, and men are capable. That women are irresponsible, and men are responsible*. That men can rape, but women cannot stop rape. That women don't have the freedom of choice, to choose their own destinies, in the context of whether they will be raped or not. That women are victims, and that men, by contrast, must be victors. That women are helpless and defenseless and at the mercy of the decisions that men make. That men get what they want, when they want it, from whom they want it. The buildup of all these contrasts encourages the subconscious prejudice in both men and women to see women as weak and inferior and men as strong and superior. It is the very epitome of sexism.

Therefore, though promulgated in the name of feminism and the defense of women, any attacks against the character or motive of a man, or the impact of his statements, if he encourages women to seek to protect themselves from the sort of men who would take advantage of them, nevertheless has the effect of PROMOTING SEXISM.

Feminism = sexism. Against women, no less. I could not be clearer.

Women, think twice about attacking any man that disagrees with you about some issue that touches on gender relations.

Men, take courage, and be careful to make sure you speak wisely on this issue. Sexism rules on "both sides," and it is your responsibility, as someone who seeks to honor woman, to fight against the things that hurt her even when it's what she believes with all her heart to be in her best interest.

~ Rak Chazak

* note the equivocation in these terms. It's nevertheless the impact of using these words without clarification and therefore the conclusion is sound.

** Rapists are solely responsible for their choice TO rape. But rapists don't exist in a void and strike at random. This is evidenced by the fact that most rape is "acquaintance rape." Rapists must CHOOSE their targets, and to do that they need motive and opportunity. You have the ability to deny them the opportunity, and to some extent their motives. If you have this ability, should you act on it? Then that is the same as saying that you're responsible for your own actions that can mitigate or exacerbate the risk of being raped. Please read this treatise to see that there are two senses of the word 'responsibility': culpability and personal governance. To say that you're accountable for yourself is not to say that you are to blame for what someone else does to you. The consequences of denying personal responsibility over your choices leads to absurdity.

Scientific Plot Twists in Images

Science News  (in the January 24, 2015 print publication) has a few things to correct you about. I'll summarize below and then put images of the articles below the jump, to back up my interpretation.

Speaking with a silly voice turns your babies into geniuses

Simple conclusion following from the premises. When you use "Baby Talk," you alert the child to that you're communicating with it, and its brain becomes receptive to vocabulary, grammar, object and concept associations, etc. Rather than confuse a child, speaking multiple languages to a developing infant is IDEAL, because it's at that age that we are able to learn multiple languages at once, because of the way the brain is behaving--I've heard it likened to a "sponge." So don't withhold knowledge from young children. Certainly they won't pick up on every thing you say, but the more you teach them, the more they pick up. And that's now being recognized in psychological circles.

Protein restrictions in diet may benefit longevity

This one was hard for me to take, because high protein levels is physiologically ideal before and after sustained anaerobic strength training exercise, because you're supplying your body's cells with enough nutrition and "building blocks" to repair and remodel its bone and muscle so that it won't break down already-existing musculature in response to the mechanical stresses. That's established science, so this doesn't negate that. But when sulfur-containing amino acids were cut to a low level in the diet of worms and mice, it affected their longevity and post-operation recovery significantly. However, as common sense would warn, you can't extrapolate this infinitely--some sulfur is necessary, as shown by the fact that when hydrogen sulfide was blocked, the animals had no measurable increase in survival or longevity. So when you're not caring about maintaining muscle, it would seem that having the lowest necessary levels of sulfurous amino acids in your diet, rather than a surplus, would benefit your health -- of course, humans have not been tested yet, only animals. We might be more complicated than mice. :)

Trying to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by piping it underground could cause earth quakes

"That'll teach those frackers to exploit Mother Earth!"

Yeah, 'nuff said. Ideas can kill. Wrong ideas, like man-caused global warming, inevitably lead to people trying to implement solutions to problems that don't exist, thereby causing worse problems. If your solution to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere involves putting us at risk of man-caused earthquakes, you just might be in desperate need of rethinking your misplaced concerns.

Homosexuality-obsessed Hollywood blatantly rewrites WWII history in The Imitation Game

"You mean Alan Turing didn't actually fail to report a Soviet spy in order to avoid being outed as gay?" 
Yes, that is what I am telling you. And not only that, but the pivotal moment in history that gave Turing the mechanism (electronic circuits) to realize his theory of computing (due to a switch-up in how the Germans were using their Enigma machines), was completely blotted out of the movie. So the origins of computers and the internet and everything electronic in modern society, which would have made for a great piece of history for Hollywood to portray, was glossed over in favor of overlaying a 21st century sociocultural narrative (that of the homosexual's reality consisting solely of fear of public humiliation) onto a context where the actual people involved would not have recognized it.

I'm not kidding. Alan Turing's story doesn't need modern polish. If you wanted to make him a martyr, why not note the fact that he married a female team member to hide his homosexuality? Or that he was forcibly given hormonal treatments by the British government, leading him to become chemically depressed and commit suicide? I'm not saying there wasn't legitimate oppression of homosexuals in history--and Alan Turing's story is a tragic one. But do you need to lie about the man's character and contributions to history in order to make your movie more dramatic? Shame on you.

Empiricism, while great in theory, apparently fails to be realized in actual scientific practice most of the time

This was a long article, so I'm not posting the whole thing. But take a look at all of the human elements that impact the reliability of published results. They are worth being aware of, and keeping in the back of your mind when you hear of sensationalized studies. I'm hardly bashing scientific research. The article addresses why some results are not perfectly replicable, with fair effect. But assertions made in papers are anything but monolithic presentations of absolute fact, and should not ever be uncritically received as such.

Ancient Egyptians and Scandinavians had trade contact. So their cultural religions, creation myths, cosmologies and pantheons were likely influenced by each other.

"These results demonstrate that the globalization of trade is not a modern invention." 

Ancient Egyptian cobalt-blue glass beads were found in graves in Denmark.


It should be noted that according to the historian Snorre Sturlason (c. 1200 A.D.), in his Ynglinga Saga, the namesakes of Odin, Thor, Balder, Frey/a, etc were all early founders of the Swedish empire at Uppsala, serving as warrior-priests. In other words, they were considered real living people who are placed at around 200-100 BC, and are described as having emigrated from Turkey to Sweden at that time. Their prominence would have later led them to be conflated with or exaggerated into god-beings. In other words, Snorre Sturlason was one of the first promoters of the critical view that cultural religious pantheons (such as the Greek, Egyptian, Roman, etc) begin as veneration and idolization of political leaders, and progress into ancestor worship and eventually an apotheosis, or deification of the distant human characters.

The date means that whereas the organization of the Egyptian and Norse pantheons may be influenced by each other, the namesakes of the Norse cannot derive earlier than the 100s AD, for historical reasons.

And here are the images:

More for the Movie Wish-List

There's a number of films I haven't yet seen, that I would like to. And they tend to be either documentaries or interview-centric. Some of the best films I've seen have been docu's. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was probably the first one of such, which changed my motivations for watching movies. After it, I saw "Iranium," and "180," but since moving back from college, with limited internet capacity, I have spent very little time on Youtube, or downloading/streaming movies anywhere, for that matter.

I "splurged" with respect to data usage, and watched this trailer:

"Polycarp: Destroyer of Gods," which I came across via Ken Ham's AiG blog where he recommended it after seeing it.

Other movies that have come out that I'd like to see are
Noah and the Last Days
IndoctriNation
Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus
and the film still in the works,
Genesis 

My list of books I'd like for a future library is even longer.

Here's to hoping I get the chance to watch the film sometime soon.

~ Rak Chazak

Addendum to the Honey Maid Criticism

It seems I'm certainly not the only one to notice the uptick in advertisements showing hitherto socially abnormal family structures as part of their promotions.

Answers in Genesis' research team brought two similar ads to Ken Ham's attention and he wrote a blog post about it recently:

"Secular companies are increasingly producing ads that promote or attempting to what they call “normalize” homosexual behavior and gay marriage. For example, as a part of its “Put Your Heart to Paper” campaign, Hallmark featured the story of a young lesbian couple. And Nikon featured the story and a gallery of photos of a family of three children with their gay fathers. Now, these companies are secular companies that don’t claim to start their thinking on God’s Word, so of course they will develop their companies based on their own reasoning. But what these ads show is the increasing acceptance in our culture of ideas that are completely contrary to biblical principles. They are a sign of the times we live in—times of disobedience to, and a rejection of, God’s Word!"

My comments on Honey Maid's "#thisiswholesome" campaign, where I actually had more strong* words to say against the promotion of divorce as a way to love children, to be honest, was posted here yesterday.

~ Rak Chazak

* More strong is not grammatically incorrect. "Stronger" would imply that the words themselves were of a different character. But the simple fact is that whereas I characterized both divorce and homosexuality as sins and family arrangements that hurt children in my article, I spent more time = more words on addressing divorce, because I think it's woefully overlooked as a negative force in society, and hence, it's accurate to say "more strong words." This concludes my lay grammar lesson.

Today and Yesterday's News in Pictures: Washington Post Clippings

Here's what I've taken note of over the last 24 hours. All are in some way politically controversial, because they either confirm or refute hype over some hot-button subject.


#1


Exhibit A: The reason people are going bananas over wheat gluten in numbers far and above those that actually have Celiac disease (and hence, an inflammatory response/intolerance to the protein), could be because they have irritable bowel syndrome or that they are "FODMAP-sensitive," which means that polysaccharides etc draw water into the gut in the process of being digested, causing swelling, bloating and irritation.

The problem is, with both FODMAPs and Gluten, if you don't specifically have inflammatory symptoms from eating wheat, you shouldn't give it up. Avoiding Gluten or FODMAPs is a recommendation for the ease of symptoms, and not a nutritional recommendation for everybody. You can in fact get ill from avoiding these foods too much, because you'll be starving the gut bacteria that are necessary for you to digest other foods, and then you'll just end up with bowel irritation of a different sort.

TL;DR -- don't avoid Gluten or FODMAP-rich foods unless you actually have irritation. If you don't, then you have more to lose than gain from cutting them out of your diet.

#2


Exhibit B: I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. The man was pretending all along. Now I am simply waiting for someone to say that he was pretending to be a Christian all along. Most of us are clued in on it. It's not terribly difficult, however, to fool a populace into thinking you're Christian when most of the voting constituents don't know what a Christian is.

That's a damning indictment.

Did I just make a pun?

#3


Exhibit C: Turns out, cholesterol in food might not be very strongly correlated with cholesterol in the blood. That doesn't mean cholesterol in the blood is good. In fact, that's very bad. But new research indicates that your blood cholesterol levels are not primarily affected by the amount of cholesterol you EAT. Your liver produces cholesterol itself, and the new research suggests that the amount of oils and fats you consume plays a larger role in influencing the amount of 'bad' cholesterol your liver produces. That could mean that a diet high in cholesterol, combined with vigorous exercise, would be better than a diet high in certain types of fats, like cheese products. Stay tuned.

#4


Exhibit D: How vaccines work, real life examples. Here there are three Big Pharma companies working on developing Ebola vaccines. Two of them are illustrated, showing how portions of the Ebola genome have been copied into milder viruses for insertion into infected patients. Because these genetically altered viruses don't contain the whole Ebola genome, but only portions that have to do with surface receptors, it will not cause Ebola disease, and still allow the immune system to organize a response and produce antibodies, so that when Ebola proper were to arrive, the body could fight it off without any symptoms.

All viruses replicate by using a host's cellular machinery to copy its DNA/RNA and then to produce proteins. The adaptive immune response primarily works by the White Blood Cells (WBCs) connecting with a foreign protein sequence via surface receptors. These trigger the WBC to engulf the foreign body and digest it (chop it up in little  pieces) with its lysosomes.

By putting the portion of Ebola's genome that codes for these surface receptors, or other protein sequences that WBCs can recognize, into a patient, the adaptive immune response can have plenty of time to optimize (that's an engineering term) their ability to recognize the sequences and chew them up and spit them out, preventing the disease from progressing.

All vaccines work in essentially the same way. In this case, actual live viruses that aren't life threatening are used as carrier's for pieces of Ebola's genome, so that plenty of antigens can be produced and the body's immune system can be properly exercised. If you don't trigger a strong enough response, the body's immune system is going to go with what works but also costs the least "effort," so it may still be vulnerable to the real thing. That's why live viruses make sense in these trials. Ebola is just too deadly to risk being only partially inoculated against.

For the vaccine skeptics: yes, you can get reactions from a vaccine. But because of the way a vaccine is formulated, you cannot get the actual disease. Since your immune system is being triggered, you might get symptoms resembling a fever, but a fever is never caused directly by disease, it's caused by your body's immune response as it attempts to heat the body so that a virus's proteins are denatured, making it ineffective. That means that your body is working the way it should. You should not be worried that some minor symptoms mean that you're getting infected by the disease.

It's similar to getting food poisoning. You don't get it from the food. You get it from something that has infected the food. Remove the infecting agent, and the food is nutritious and good for you. All viruses have multiple gene sequences: some for replicating itself, others that code for the protective capsid covering, and still others that produce proteins that are directly responsible for disease symptoms. When a vaccine is researched, the disease-causing sequences are cut out of the genome, so that when the genes coding for WBC-recognizable protein sequences are injected into a patient, the patient cannot get the disease, but will still be able to develop immunity without risk of symptoms.

In the utterly rare cases that someone gets minimally ill from a vaccine, it's never a form of the disease but usually an artifact of the immune response, and as such is nearly never life threatening. It is people with weak immune systems that are at risk -- but consequently, they are not able to get vaccinated. That's why kids younger than 1 have been getting Measles--they aren't old enough to get vaccinated yet, which incidentally leaves them at greater risk.

Hopefully this clears the air a bit (that was not an intentional pun. What is with me today?)


~ Rak Chazak

Honey Maid "Wholesome" Commercial: One of These Is Not Like The Other

Perhaps you've seen this new commercial on tv, the one that starts with "I didn't think I'd get divorced, but the way I look at it, there's just more of us to love the kids now."

This clip of it doesn't include the longer intro with that voiceover, but it shows the other two couples:

It's about 20 seconds.

The advertisement seems to be part of a PR attempt to court people on political grounds, practically screaming "look how progressive we are with family values!"

They highlight divorce as "wholesome"
And they highlight two men, implicitly gay and raising an infant together, as "wholesome."

And then there's an "interracial" couple.

For some reason, people have trouble with a black man and white woman, or black woman and white man, being in a relationship. I don't get it. The only thing that stands out to me is that it's unusual, because you don't see it very often--but that's just statistics. There's nothing wrong with it. Now, if you're promoting it because you want to be a rebel against tradition, then perhaps you should reexamine your motives. I personally disdain the word "interracial" as this Answers in Genesis article helps explain.

But yet, a couple of mixed ethnic background is bookended between divorce and homosexuality in an ad that calls all of them "wholesome." And because I don't come from a background of disdaining relationships between "black" and "white" people, I am really left wondering whether the interracial couple in the ad is put in there to legitimize the other two couples, or if the same-sex couple is silently added at the end, feeding a baby with a bottle and walking behind a stroller, to confront pro-SSM advocates about their own personal racial biases by revealing their hypocrisy about who can love whom.

But either way, the commercial is saddening not just because it equates a commitment between one man and one woman, with broken commitment (divorce) and an imitation of the real which falls short (SSM), but because it holds up divorce as wholesome for children.

In all honesty, when it comes to the child aspect of it, divorce is WORSE. Not only are there more divorcees with children than there are same sex couples, thereby making it a bigger issue, I daresay that the harm divorce causes is at least on the same level if not more severe than having two same sex guardians, which is only one un-ideal relationship among many.

One child grows up with two dads, and never sees an intimate example of how a man should treat a woman.
One child grows up with a mom and dad, and sees betrayal of trust, abandonment, broken commitment, emotional withdrawal, selfishness and possibly abuse, adultery, deceit and finds themselves thrown under the bus, a child sacrificed for their parents' childishness.

Which is worse? One grows up having a hard time believing in a God who would say that their two fathers' affection for each other is borne of sin. One grows up having a hard time believing in a God who would say that marriage is a picture of His love for them, when the only marriage they've known has been one in which the father had nothing like a self-sacrificial loving attitude toward their mother, or his children.

Both are hurt. Both are sins. Now, divorce is a sin that has a definite boundary to it. Once you marry someone else, going back to your first spouse would require divorcing your second, which would also be sin; so there is no guaranty that tells you you have to choose one or the other, except that commitments shouldn't be broken. But with homosexuality, the desire itself is the sin, so the continued fleshly intimacy between two people is a continual rebellion against God. In terms of which is worse to do, it would seem that SSM is more dangerous for the actual sinners.

But for those who are sinned against? The children who are wounded by their parents' sins? The greater societal problem today would seem to be divorce, which by virtue of the fact that children's beliefs about God are strongly influenced by their relationships with their father, devastates a person's ability to contemplate the Heavenly Father as a compassionate, loving being.

Neither situation should be diminished; both are serious and both harm children. I find it offensive that both of these are held up next to a perfectly normal relationship between a black woman and a white man, and propounded as being "wholesome." But the thing that offended me the most was the voiceover that said "there are more of us to love the kids," and used that to rationalize backwards that the divorce was a good thing. That shows they don't even know what love is. That's tragic.

Honey Maid does a fine example of showing just how unwholesome it is, and how insulting it is to mixed-ethnicity couples by saying that relationships that deprive children of healthy relationships with both of their biological parents are "just as good as theirs."

They're not. And using children to justify the childish desire to buck the rules and do what you feel like you want to do for yourself is a poignant reminder that we live in a society where selfishness is the norm, and that whereas everyone grows up, not everyone matures.

Should your own sexual lusts take precedence over the well being of a child?

That is the flagrant challenge that the Honey Maid commercial makes. What will you decide?

~ Rak Chazak

"Christ-Mass" Thoughts from Spurgeon

Emphasis in the original for the first paragraph. Other emphases added to show my points of greatest agreement.

"We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas. First, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be sung in Latin or in English; and secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. Superstition has fixed most positively the day of our Savior's birth, although there is no possibility of discovering when it occurred. ... It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the church celebrated the nativity of our Lord; and it was not till very long after the Western church had set the example, that the Eastern adopted it. ... Probably the fact is that the "holy" days were arranged to fit in with the heathen festivals. We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the twenty-fifth of December.

Nevertheless since, the current of men's thoughts is led this way just now, and I see no evil in the current itself, I shall launch the bark of our discourse upon that stream, and make use of the fact, which I shall neither justify nor condemn, by endeavoring to lead your thoughts in the same direction. Since it is lawful, and even laudable, to meditate upon the incarnation of the Lord upon any day in the year, it cannot be in the power of other men's superstitions to render such a meditation improper for to-day. Regarding not the day, let us, nevertheless, give God thanks for the gift of His dear Son."

"Joy Born at Bethlehem," December 24, 1871

THIS is the season of the year when, whether we wish it or not, we are compelled to think of the birth of Christ. I hold it to be one of the greatest absurdities under heaven to think that there is any religion in keeping Christmas-day. There are no probabilities whatever that our Savior Jesus Christ was born on that day and the observance of it is purely of Popish origin; doubtless those who are Catholics have a right to hallow it, but I do not see how consistent Protestants can account it in the least sacred. However, I wish there were ten or a dozen Christmas-days in the year; for there is work enough in the world, and a little more rest would not hurt laboring people. Christmas-day is really a boon to us, particularly as it enables us to assemble round the family hearth and meet our friends once more. Still, although we do not fall exactly in the track of other people, I see no harm in thinking of the incarnation and birth of the Lord Jesus. 

"The Incarnation and Birth of Christ," December 1855

So what's the final point? That there's no reason I see to participate in a cultural mandate, except to capitalize on the fact that other people are more (superstitiously, as Spurgeon put it) receptive to hearing messages about Christ on this day and in this season than in others throughout the year,

...and do what? Preach the Gospel, of course. There's no greater way to spend any day no matter what time of year it is, this side of eternity. There is no purpose in marking this one day as an auspicious holiday for my family, since to me EVERY day is a celebration of Christ's redeeming work on the Cross, His human birth being an incidental necessity to that end, and EVERY day is a day worthy of spending meditating on His goodness and how to serve Him better. The purpose of Christmas, then, as with Pearl Harbor Day, 9-11, 4th of July, Halloween, Valentine's Day, and any other day of celebration or tragedy, is in its utility in reaching people through the avenue of a subject that their minds will by custom and tradition be conditioned to thinking about, more then than at any other time.

The idea that Christ should be celebrated on only ONE day of the year is an abominable absurdity. In a theological sense, I abhor the whole concept of the "present economic arrangement called Christmas." But that doesn't mean I don't find some redeeming value in the fact of its existence. The great expository preaching I've heard on the radio this week is a testament to Spurgeon's insight in the second and third paragraph quoted.

~ Rak Chazak

Fox News is Not Your Friend (Hat-Tip to Wretched)

Subcaption: Voddie Baucham Cut off As Soon as He Mentions the Cross

Video after the jump.

Here's the link to the original podcast that inspired the article title for this piece:

http://www.wretchedradio.com/podcast.cfm?h=62C14A71AA2030A715E5A1720DABEFD2&page=86

And now the piece de resistance. Black conservative pastor taken on conservative television station to talk about black violence and racism, and perhaps you think the producers will let him spread his conservative Christian views?

Haha. Nope.

See, Fox News is conservative, but that does not equivocate to Biblical Christianity. Sure, as Todd points out in the intro to the podcast, there might be many Christians on the side of the Republican Party, but that does not make the GOP a Christian, let alone Bible-based platform, party, or movement. It's most fair to say that it's influenced by Christians, but it disdains us in much the same way that the Democratic Party disdains the Republican Party. It's merely a matter of degree. Both groups want national influence, and they are strongly motivated to cast themselves as pro-Christian or the true representation of Christian virtue, in different ways, in order to court the support of believers.

But the parties as a whole and the nation as a whole is not Christian, and to say that Christianity influences them is becoming a more and more misleading statement.

No, Fox News exists to make money by selling commercial time based on viewership. They do whatever they can to get more views, hence the nauseating sensationalism. Yes, they bring up valid journalistic pieces that other networks don't, but then they do the same as those other networks. CNN might have spent 200 hours covering Carnival cruise disasters a few years ago, but FNC has covered Benghazi and that soldier stuck in a Mexican prison in just the same manner. "Breaking News: Nothing New To Report in the Politically Charged Issue We Keep Telling You About Because We've Staked Our Quarterly Profits On It." Ugh, just quit it.

Ferguson has something in common with 5th century BC Athens

And that is ostracism. It was a practice where unpopular people would be thrown out of a city if enough people wanted them gone. There's a theory mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the subject that suggests that the purpose of ostracism was to satisfy the anger of the populace while avoiding the troubling outcomes of vigilante murder or mob lynching, or political tyranny if the person was a public official. That's an interesting statement. The idea is essentially that ostracism appeases the anger of the mob. There were no rules for why someone should be ostracized, except that there had to be a sizeable vote by the citizenry to cast him out. It could be for no good reason at all, as you'll note at the end of the first link.

Officer Wilson is apparently leaving Ferguson "willingly." Yeah, right. I don't think he wanted any of this hullabaloo to happen for the simple fact that he did his job. Yes, the evidence is in. Here is the AP link hub to all of the Grand Jury documents.

Wilson wasn't likely forced out by an official act of the police department. Although facts may come out to the tune that he was pressured to leave, that's probably unlikely as well. No, it seems clear that he can't live a normal life in the city any more because of the public lynching-in-effigy that has occurred by people with no facts, but plenty of racial animosity toward him. He's a hated man. He's unsafe wherever he goes, because someone might think that they can make a name for themselves by taking him out.

"They got some intelligence that suggested there were going to be some targets at the Ferguson Police Department and the minute he said that, he also indicated that he thought his resignation might alleviate some of those threats," one of Wilson's attorneys Neil Bruntrager said. "They had some intel that suggested there was going to be some action of a violent nature." source

It's injustice, but it is reality. He'll have to go somewhere else because he's unwelcome. He's been ostracized.

And Ferguson's race rioters and the criminally biased news media have taken social progress back 2500 years.

~ Rak Chazak

PS I was initially misled (thanks to CBS-sponsored news-tickers at my workplace) to believe that there were reports that Wilson was leaving the city itself, not just the police force. I wanted to put this here to correct that, although I still think it's likely that he'll eventually leave anyway. How could you stay there when you have no hope of a living in your chosen career, and where everybody from the gutter to the ivory towers hates you and wants to turn your life into a failure in order to vent their private frustrations? But that's speculation. The point about being pressured out by public opinion still stands, as shown in the citation I added.

"Darren Wilson has a new wife and a child on the way. And while his wife works for the Ferguson police department, Wilson is now unemployed. People have been trying to keep their income afloat with vigorous online fundraising efforts."

Filed under, lives ruined by racism

A Little Joel Rosenberg to Start the Day

Joel is one of many stories like these that I have come across--some of the biggest power players in Christianity are not Gentiles, but Jews. Ray Comfort, perhaps the biggest influence on open-air evangelism in the whole world, is an ethnic Jew; as is Jonathan Sarfati, a prodigy by any human measure, who churns out an amazing variety, amount and quality of work for CMI in that ministry's young-earth creation apologetics capacity.

That's the field of preaching and the field of teaching, to name two spiritual gifts the New Testament mentions as being areas wherein Christians work for the Lord (the point is not to label; there's overlap of gifts and it's indicated that not all possible gifts are listed). The point of the gifts mentioned by Paul and Peter seem primarily to me to be in context of talking about the "Body of Christ." Christians as part of the invisible Church all have a role to play, and the purpose of mentioning gifting is, I think, to enlighten us that there are diversities of ways to serve the Lord. Ray Comfort could not do Jonathan Sarfati's job, and I doubt there's anyone quite like Ray Comfort in his singleminded zeal for evangelizing the lost. Their natural talents and inclinations are divinely given to equip them for the purpose God intended them to fulfill.

Then there's the gift of prophecy, which brings me to another Jewish Christian. No one is quite so heavily involved in current events and politics as he, while still not failing to keep himself and his ministry centered on the Gospel. It's incredibly easy to fall into a trap where Christianity is subsumed into your political activism, and well-intended people and organizations abound where this can be seen. But in every place that I've read Joel's words or heard him speak, he has not lost sight of his ultimate goal--which is not awareness of a political issue, or some larger agenda to influence mid-east relations (though that's in view, but not the endgame)--he knows that his aim is to spread the Gospel first, and that his position of influence in political spheres is an aid to that, not the other way around.

Joel Rosenberg recently addressed criticism of the new Left Behind movie. Mark, he didn't defend the movie--what happened is that it brought out a lot of professing christians who denounced it because allegedly the Rapture is an "unbiblical" doctrine. Here's his article:

http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/hollywood-tackles-the-end-times-with-left-behind-film-but-is-the-rapture-a-biblical-concept-or-a-fictional-plot-device/

Second Real Election, First Real Ballot Win

For me, not for some candidate or party in particular.

In 2012, on every single issue that came up on referendum in the state I live in, not to mention the presidential election, I picked the losing side. This year, with the exception of two offices, I picked every winner, both local and state level as well as state and local initiatives.

It feels nice not to be losing all the time.

But my relief is tempered by the knowledge that it's only a temporary victory. Our final destiny on this side of eternity--especially if we are close to the end--is to be defeated, not to conquer. It is by being overcome that the saints overcome, following in the imitation of Christ who dying, defeated death. Our victory will not be political in nature, so let's not be tempted by the same trap as the Jews, who both in Jesus' time as well as right this very moment are expecting a conquering Savior to come and destroy the ungodly nations and set up His everlasting kingdom from Zion. Mark, that day will come, but "in this life you will have tribulation." Don't lose sight of that detail. Don't get distracted by the alluring prize of political victories.

Bear in mind that the more important goal than winning elections is winning souls. If the Gospel suffers while we secure greater freedom or prosperity, what have we gained? We already know that our lives are not graded by how well we lived for ourselves, for our own sake. What matters in eternity is how well we died to self, and lived for God, promoting His cause--the good news of salvation--above all earthly causes.

I'm keenly political and a diehard conservative pundit at heart, by virtue of the nature of my transformation between 2010-12. But thanks to the faithful God-centered guidance by ministries like Answers in Genesis, Grace to You, The Way of the Master and Wretched Radio, I'm totally convinced that any gains, while they help us, are a mirage, if they are not accompanied, or better, underpinned, by solid and faithful Gospel preaching. You can't change the world without changing the world's hearts. This shouldn't be the primary motivation of preaching, but it should be the first priority in politics. What are you working for, if you're trying to get out the Christian vote when the Christians are dying and not being replaced? Political activism in the cause of conservatism is PERFECTLY FUTILE if it is sought after for its own sake, and not simply accepted as a gratifying side effect of truly converted souls reached by God's Word.

And if politics has no point to it if the Gospel isn't in it, then it is perfectly clear that the only thing worth pushing the agenda for is the spread of said Gospel. Political victories are nice, but they aren't the ends, and they aren't even the means by which we secure lasting victories in the name of God. The only cause worth fighting is God's cause, and that means that no matter whether we win or lose politically, we will always bring the discussion back to the Biblical truth, and always turn attention away from us toward God. In humility sacrificing our own desires for success in government for the greater good of touching as many lives as possible with the truth we've been entrusted, and giving the final results to God.

That's the only way to be content, whether the temporary fight is a win or a rout.

And in a strictly theological sense, consider, with the good feeling you feel when you win an election, imagine how much grander the relief will be when the greatest of all victories is finally realized: when Jesus is King of Earth for a thousand years, and vanquishes once and for all the gridlock, the partisanship, the corruption, the special interests and the man-centered rule of law that perverts the name of justice in all the earth today?

Take the short term success in stride and keep your eyes fixed on the prize: Jesus, and evangelism. Jesus and evangelism. Jesus and evangelism.

"But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven...; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." ~ Matthew 6:20-21

~ Rak Chazak

Movie Reviews: Guardians of the Galaxy, Catching Fire, 47 Ronin, and More…

Redbox has become a middle road between the convenience of Netflix and the tangibility of what once was Blockbuster. Do you remember Blockbuster? It was a movie library, where you could go and peruse the classics on the shelves as well as pick up the new releases advertised around the wall. This was how I saw Terminator as late as 2008. But the internet era killed Blockbuster. The prices for rentals and the 7-day return was a relic of a pre-internet era. I mean, most of the movies were in VHS format! After this, my family finally joined the 21^st century and got ourselves a DVD player. Now a new contender has popped up, taking advantage of the ease of storage of DVDs and securing a reliable business model with one-day rental, allowing the prices to be low, ensuring customer loyalty. Redbox has become an overnight hit and I see them everywhere. There are at least five that I’m aware of in my town, at gas stations and supermarkets, but there are probably several more, and we’ve definitely taken up the habit of bringing home a movie in the evening some days and returning it the next morning after watching it. The calculus is too appealing to forgo: I can go to the movies and pay $8 for a ticket, $13 for 3D, and double that price if I’m paying for another person because I’m treating them. Compare this to the $1.20 price (increased once, so far, after starting at a flat rate of $1) of any DVD at Redbox. I can watch every single blockbuster of a single year for the price of taking me and one other person to the movies. This leaves plenty of room for snacks, not to mention that I can choose when to watch it, which is a convenience not afforded by small theaters, and it offers the opportunity to watch a broader range of movies than I might otherwise bother to go to theaters for. I would suspect that Redbox has therefore been a boon to independent films, and films that don’t get wide releases or make it to the aforementioned small theaters. In summary: all but one of the following I have watched on a Redbox rental, the sole exception being Guardians of the Galaxy, which we had to stay up til 9:30 for the latest showing, getting out around midnight, all just to avoid giving 3D a chance to ruin it for us. I don’t need 3D gimmicks to tell me that Object X is in front of Object Y. My eyes’ depth perception works just fine with a flat image, and the 3D glasses make the picture less sharp, which is my biggest irritation with it. A useless gimmick is one thing, but for it to reduce the picture quality? Why am I paying more for this, again?!

On to the reviews!

I determined that I could group some of the observations I made from these into different categories. Seeing everything through a lens of Christian theology is making me pick up on intriguing themes, whether intentional or unintentional as far as the director/producers are concerned. Some of the movies have little applicable themes, like Lone Survivor, which since it was made to be an accurate retelling doesn’t try to go outside of its realm, artistically speaking. The Last Days on Mars is another example of one without any sort of Christian parallels, seeing as it was (to my surprise) a good old-fashioned space zombies horror thriller. I’m honest with this and if I don’t pick up on something that I consider poignant, I won’t try to pigeonhole a movie to mean something it doesn’t. Yet, several of the movies were fascinating in this regard. Others were just good because they didn’t have “unnecessary gratuitous boobies” or suchlike.

There will be some spoilers.
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Cheeky Response to "God Wants You to Be Happy," Using Selected Bible Verses

I'm reposting this from somewhere on facebook, but in the event that the person who posted it won't prefer to have more exposure of their name outside of where they posted it, I will post it anonymously. That's not to take credit for it. Ultimately, after all, the credit is God's, because it's nearly completely composed of Bible verses.

Victoria Olsteen said that “God wants you to be happy.” These words are in fact in the Bible. They just do not appear in all together in the same place. Below is my suggestion as to which verses these words might have come from. 

The word “God” from Acts 14:21-22. “When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

The word “wants” from Matthew 16:44. “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’”

Alternatively, the word “wants” could be from 2 Timothy 3:12. “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”

The words “to be” from Titus 3:1. “Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good,”

The word “happy” from Ecclesiastes 7:14. “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.”


~ Rak Chazak